LIFE IN KENYA

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18849, 11 April 1931, Page 21

LIFE IN KENYA

NOT ALL ROSES. Farming in Kenya is just as much routine as farming in New Zealand or elsewhere, except that the “interludes" are likely to be more startling than in a land where there are no locusts, eagles, or rhinoceroses. But in “A Kenyan Farm Diary” Mrs V. M. Carnegie has produced a very readable and at the same time informative book. Her farm is situated about 7000 feet above the sea-level, just south of the Equator. The stand-by is sheep and cattle; butter is delivered to a township some distance away. Maize is grown; the irregularity of the seasons rule out other cereal crops. Poultry, pigs, and goats are raised, but rather as a side-line than with a view of profit. Major Carnegie, in the period covered by the diary was still suffering from the effects of war service, and it fell to Mrs Carnegie to essay tasks, such as the supervision of the sheep, which are not usually undertaken by members of her sex.

She writes in a cheerul spirit, and her sense of humour never deserts her, even in the midst of sharp disappointments. Kenya is evidently no place for pessimists or those who are easily discouraged. The unexpected constantly happens, and the brightest hopes are apt to be falsified by a sudden blow. Take, for instance, their side-line in hens. When their first big brood were safely past the dangers of infancy and had been protected from vermin and snakes, a large eagle appeared and reduced the numbers from one hundred to twenty-seven in a few weeks. When it had gone and new birds bought, a mongoose got into the hen-run and red mites. After an interval of immunity, badgers arrived. Steps were taken, but other wild beasts came and seized the hens. So eventually they were put into proper expensive poultry-runs, and then they all stopped laying and started liver disease.

The monotony and the discouragements are not concealed, nor the hostiltiy of Africa to the settler. However, in Kenya the housewife is spared much of the drudgery. The domestic as well as the outdoor work is done by natives, who, when handled with a mixture of firmness and tact, make excellent servants.

NOTES. British publishers announce that,, up to Christmas Day, 9907 new books had been issued in 1930. Of these, 1705 were novels. It would be very interesting, says a writer in the London Sunday Times, if they would give some of the smaller figures of their sales. The other day an inkling into this was afforded by the casual disclosure of the fact that one excellent autobiography of the season has sold only sixty-nine copies. Seven hundred were given away. At a Forum Club dinner recently a Scotland Yard official said that he had observed the ease with which the detective in fiction was able to spend Government money. In real life there was an audit department, and it was not so easy. Miss Dorothy Sayers remarked on the difficulty of thinking three times a year of new ways of killing people. Every time he hears of a new invention or discovery the detective novelist says: “What good is this? Can you kill anyone with it?” Bertrand Russell is quoted as having said in a recent interview': “I think all writers of first novels should be given six months in goal. The sentence might be extended to all writers what- | soever. If a law w'ere passed giving I six months in goal to every writer of a | first book only the good ones would ' think it w'orth while to do it.” Such 1 a sentence, remarks a writer, would be ! no hardship whatever; on the contrary, I it would solve the problem on how to live until the royalties begin to come in.